We’re got a 100% full flight, and we’re boarding in 10 minutes. Not that it was going to make any difference to me, since I wasn’t planning to move, but still, good to know.

I just got word that I’m having breakfast at the Renyi Institute, which is one of the world’s centers for mathematics. Budapest is still an amazing place to do pure mathematics, and I think it’s an interesting test-case in the stickiness of place and culture. Of all forms of knowledge work, you’d think mathematics could be done anywhere; and yet national traditions persist, and certain places have great reputations for geometry, or number theory, or algebra.

This is going to be quite a trip.

[To the tune of Yoshinori Sunahara, “Information of TUA,” from the album “Take Off and Landing”.]